Leadership Beats Pizza 2 to 1!

Leadership is a hot topic. Just recently I did a quick google search for the term leadership and got 3,800,000,000 results in 0.56 seconds. That’s almost four billion results! By comparison, a search for the term pizza returned 1.3 billion results. It’s hard to believe, but leadership beat pizza nearly two to one! That’s a lot of leadership, and that was one of my aha moments!

I’ve been studying leadership for many years (by the way, I’ve been making pizza for many years too, but that’s for another post). Then one day I asked what I thought was a simple question: Why is it that some of the best leaders are not at the top of an organization? That question started me on a journey that would lead me to look at leadership through a different lens. Along the journey, I’ve had a lot of “aha moments.” Here are three of them.

Aha-moment #1: When I realized that much of the leadership literature is focused on the upper few—those who lead at the top of the organization. Did you ever notice that?

On a recent trip, I stopped at the airport bookstore to take a look at the leadership titles. The vast majority were written for those who lead at the top of an organization. For example, there is a lot of talk about vision and vision casting. Developing vision is extremely important, but this activity is unusually reserved for those at the top. By the way, did you ever notice that there are very few leadership positions at the top? Think about it. Generally speaking there is one leadership position at the top of every organization. One! You can name some of the more famous ones. And yet, there are hundreds of thousands and more who are leading in the middle of the organization. Who speaks to those who lead in the middle?

Aha-moment #2: When I realized that middle leaders get a lot of work done. If there are hundreds of thousands of middle leaders in organizations in North America alone, imagine how much work gets done in the middle. Imagine the combined influence middle leaders have in their businesses, schools, churches, and organizations. This leads me to my third aha moment.

Aha-moment #3: When I realized that some of the greatest leaders are located in the middle of an organization. That's when the light came on! Leadership is not only for those at the top, but for anyone who will engage in the process of leadership, regardless of position. These great leaders are often hidden in the middle, rarely seen, until someone shines a light on them.

With so much at stake, why have so few addressed the middle leader’s challenges, hopes, and dreams? Why have so few attempted to provide the middle leader with information and tools that will help them be better leaders, right where they are, right in the middle? Middle leaders, though often hidden in the middle of an organization, may well be the great leaders of our day. This blog is dedicated to shining light on those great leaders—those who lead in the middle.